Transnistria
is an artificial geographic term, created in World War
II, referring to the part of the Ukraine conquered by
German and Romanian troops in the summer of 1941. Before
the war this area had a Jewish population of 300,000.
Tens of thousands of them were slaughtered by
Einsatzgruppe D, and by German and Romanian forces. When
Transnistria was occupied it was used for the
concentration of the Jews of Bessarabia, Bukovina, and
northern Moldavia who were expelled on the direct order
of Ion Antonescu. The deportations began on September 15,
1941, and continued, until the fall of 1942. Most of the
Jews who survived the mass killings carried out in
Bessarabia and Bukovina were deported to Transnistria by
the end of 1941. Also deported to Transnistria were
political prisoners and Jews who had evaded the existing
regulations on forced labor. The total number of
deportees was apparently 150,000, although German sources
put the figure at 185,000. On October 13, 1942, the
Romanians called a halt to the deportations to
Transnistria.

1941-1942
Deportation of Romanian Jews to Transnistria[United
States National Archives and Record
Administration]

The
Murderous Acitivities of the
Romanians

The
ghettos and camps in the region were in the hands of the
gendarmerie and the Romanian administrative authorities.
In late November 1941 most of the Jews from Bessarabia
and Bukovina were herded into ghettos and camps in
northern and central Transnistria. Following the
Antonescu - ordered slaughter of the Jews of Odessa, the
Romanian occupation authorities deported the survivors to
camps

Bogdanovka
(Romanian, Bogdanovca), camp located on the Bug
River, in the village of Bogdanovka in
Transnistia. It was established in October 1941
by the Romanian occupation authorities. By
December 1, 1941, over 54,000 Jews from
Bessarabia and Odessa were imprisoned in the
camp. In mid-December, typhus broke out in
Bogdanovka. At that point, the Romanians and
Germans decided to destroy the entire camp
population. The extermination began on December
21. Romanian soldiers and police, Ukrainian
police, and local civilians took part, under the
command of the local Ukrainian police chief.
Approximately 5,000 sick and handicapped
prisoners were locked into two stables which
were then burnt down. The rest of the prisoners
were marched in groups of
300--400
to the river. They were forced to remove their
clothing and kneel. Then they were shot or hit
with hand grenades. The killing continued for
four days, during which 30,000 Jews were
murdered. The killing was stopped temporarily on
Christmas Eve, while the remaining Jews were
left outside, freezing and waiting to die. The
massacre began again on December 28; 11,000 Jews
were killed by December 31. Two hundred were
kept alive to burn the bodies, after which most
of them were either killed or died from
exposure.[Source:
Yad Vashem]

in the
Golta
district: 54,000 to the Bogdanovka
camp, 18,000 to the Akhmetchetka
camp, and 8,000 to the Domanevka
camp. In Bogdanovka
all the Jews were shot to death, with the Romanian
gendarmerie, the Ukrainian police, and Sonderkommando R,
made up of Volksdeutsche, taking part. In January and
February 1942, 12,000 Ukrainian Jews were murdered in the
two other camps. Another 28,000 Jews, mostly from the
Ukraine, were killed by the SS and German police, with
the help of local Germans in southern Transnistria. By
March 1943 no more than 485 Ukrainian Jews were left in
all of southern Transnistria. A total of 185,000
Ukrainian Jews were murdered by Romanian and German army
units.

The
Romanians had no plans for the resettlement of tens of
thousands of deportees from Romania, and their sole aim
was to drive the Jews further east and north. No
provisions were made for the most basic necessities. The
winter of 1941 - 1942 was severe, with tens of thousands
of deportees perishing. The deported Romanian Jews
organized on their own and tried to establish mutual aid.
The situation improved as the winter of 1942 - 1943 drew
near, when the first shipments of aid from the Jewish
communities in the Regat and southern Transylvania
reached the Jews in Transnistria.

Attempts
to Provide Aid to Jews in
Transnistria

On
December 17, 1941, Wilhelm Filderman, obtained
Antonescu's consent for aid to be sent to Transnistria;
but the authorities placed all sorts of obstacles in the
way. Still, the aid played an important role in helping
at least some to survive. The determined efforts made by
the Jewish organizations, together with the second
thoughts that the Romanian leaders were having about
their policy, paved the way for representatives of the
Comisia Autonoma de Asistenta (Autonomous Committee for
Assistance) being permitted to visit the area. Toward the
end of 1943, aid for the deported Jews in Transnistria
was being sent there by the American Jewish Joint
Distribution Committee, the rescue committee of the
Jewish Agency in Turkey, the World Jewish Congress, and
the Oeuvre De Secours aux Enfants (OSE). In February 1943
Pope Pius XII made a nominal contribution to the aid
effort. The Consiliul Evreesc (Jewish Council) focused
its struggle on the repatriation of the deportees and on
the release of some of them to go to Palestine. Also in
April 1943, the council, with the help of the Centrala
Evreilor (Jewish Center), obtained Antonescu's permission
for the return to Romania of 5,000 orphans and other
Jews. The 5,000 were not repatriated, owing to German
opposition, obstructions put in the way by the governor
of Transnistria, and the intervention of the mufti of
Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al - Husseini. Filderman was
expelled to Transnistria in May 1943, and upon his return
to Romania in August called on the government to enable
all the Jews to return to Romania.

Finally,
with the Soviet army closing in on Transnistria,
permission was given for the Jews to come back, and in
mid - December 1943 the first group of 1,500 survivors
returned. In March 1944 a group of 1,841 orphans, out of
4,500 still alive at the time, came back. On March 15,
the Soviet army launched the liberation of Transnistria.
At this point a Jewish committee from Bucharest succeeded
in repatriating another group, consisting of 2,518
deportees. Of the Jews who had been deported to
Transnistria, a total of 145,000 to 150,000, some 90,000
perished there. Many of the remaining survivors were
allowed to return to Romania in 1945 and 1946..